Nightmares
by Gemma Inkyboots
Summary: A little Skyfire tale. In a ref to their early exploring days the scientist hearkens back to another planet's stories when he has an uneasy night and needs something to fall back on. Surprisingly for my fics, Starscream doesn't totally steal the limeligh


Okay. Short interlude before I begin - it's not desperately improtant to the story so you can skip if you want.

One thing I'm always at least slightly afraid of when I'm writing a fic, even and especially non-mushy ones, is making a main character sound - for want of a better word - _girlie_. I wasn't a particularly girlie little girl, living in joggers and watching Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles - although I did love my My Little Ponies dearly. However, I used to make my favourite characters go through godawful traumas and be damnably heroic by winning despite insurmountable and ridiculous odds at the eleventh hour while jumping through blazing hoops. (Okay, I made that bit up...) None of which I put into my actual written fanfics, I hope, and for which I blame addictive, boy-aimed eighties cartoons. ;) (heh.)

Still, I have this nagging paranoia of turning one of my characters, canon or not, into a crying ball of girlie mush - especially Starscream, whom I fear I'm turning into a nymphomaniac, despite only writing two actual PWPs with him in. I tried desperately hard to avoid it in _Home_, and hopefully succeeded (I think I did, but I'm biased.) I liked that fic, personally, but I abhor the idea of my big, nasty D-cons turning into what TC (of TC's Pile of Garbage fame) calls S.N.A.Ds - Sensitive New Age Decepticons. In other words sloppy, gushy, _moral_ 'Sue-worshipping mockeries of who they should be. Aaagh! I _try_ to make mine slightly based on their real personalities - Star's snarky and artful, and Dreadmoon's even worse - and a smidgin 'realistic', though I admit the watchtower PWP thing was pushing it.

As such, to redress the balance - imagined or not - I am continuing on my Skyfire-spree (begun in _Meetings_, hint hint) by writing a story where someone _other_ than a D-con has a bad night. I swear I won't make him sound girlie, but I like the idea of the big, cuddly white jet. And, for once, the All-Mighty Screaming One will only get a cameo, no matter how hard he prods me - ow! Knock it off, will you?!

Anyway, enough rambli- Yes, I'm getting on with it! Jeesh!

Sorry 'bout the essay there, anyway. On with the show!

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Nightmares 

Skyfire, as a rule, tended to recharge with the lighting off. Not for any mysterious reason, he'd simply got into the habit exploring other sentient, light-using worlds similar in style to Earth. At least, that's what he'd told anyone at the Arc curious enough to ask - and there had been a few, as the Autobots didn't work to a diurnal body rhythm as their human friends did but simply recharged between shifts any time of the day or night regardless of the illumination.

The more honest answer - and there was only one other being he'd ever admitted this to, not that he'd _totally_ lied to the others - was that he'd been visiting one planet, not as advanced technology-wise as the majority of modern Earth but sentient before humanity was a gleam in a primate's eye, and had been struck by a simple children's story they had told.

The basic outline of the tale - a story told to quiet fearful children in the dark of the night - had been that once there was a youngling, a daughter of one of the many nomadic tribes that walked the planet, who had followed her father into the empty, rolling plains encircling their camp. Whenever Skyfire remembered the story he could never entirely separate it from the voice of the tribe's 'Grandfa', the elder who told the story to his sniffling grandchild as she sat on his lap in the light of a campfire's embers; the stars burning softly overhead and Starscream leaning against him half in recharge as he listened had intertwined with the memory so strongly Skyfire couldn't recall the story at all without being taken back...back....hearing again the low crackling of the embers, the hiccupping breath of a young child, the gentle hum and sigh of Starscream's form in the night and the deep, slow voice of the elder, telling the story as he rocked his granddaughter in his lap, arms safe and warm around her.

"Once and once, dearest girlchile, our people walked the world as we always have done and ever will do; and once and once, my dearest girlchile, a daddy's own dearest one woke in the deepest velvet night, when her daddy was watching for wildlings in the hills of the deepest dark with their starshine eyes, and she cried for her daddy. But he didn't hear his own beloved girlchile, my dearest - he was keeping her safe from the wildlings in the deepest dark, where he had sworn her he would.

This girlchile had no mammy, my dearest one - she had no-one to tell her where her daddy is, though he had told her he watched for the wildlings with their burn-bright eyes to keep her safe in the deepest dark night. She cried, and he could not hear, so she pulled up her blanket, _so_, and out she walked, past the safe-bright-warm of the fire and out into the deep-dark-cold of the velvet night. She can't see her daddy, dearest girlchile, for she had looked out at the fire and saw only the flame-stars in its heart, but her daddy can see her, and he comes to gather her up in his strong-warm arms and says, 'Dearest girlchile, why are you here in the dark?'

"The girlchile can't see her daddy, and cries - 'I want my daddy; it's cold and deep-dark, and he said he would keep me safe from the wildlings in the deepest velvet, but now I can't find him.' And her daddy smiled, and he said to his dearest one...

"I will always keep you safe, my own girlchile, in the deep velvet dark or the wide bright world. Wherever you walk, I am with you, even if your star-eyes can't see me, and I will watch over you for the rest of your days and ever after, my dearest one. I will always be there in the dark, loving you.'"

Starscream had shifted drowsily, snuggled up close and murmured softly, silently, _I will always be there in the dark, loving you._ Skyfire had wrapped his arm around the fire-lit waist and replied, **_I will always be there in your light with you, my star-sprite. _**They had sat there, simply gazing into the night sky together in deep, velvet silence as the elder rocked his sleeping grandchild and carried her back soft-footed to her tent.

From then on Skyfire had remembered those words, and always felt safer sleeping in the darkness of the Arc with the sweet story, and its bittersweet memories, to keep him whole.

But now, in the storm-dark and gripped in the icy claws of nightmares, the familiar tale couldn't help Skyfire as he fought the freezing chains binding him ever tighter. He was locked in a cage of ice, its dagger crystals creeping inward to eventually smother him. Claustrophobia screamed as Skyfire fought but he couldn't move, held immobile as years flew by outside the ice that was to be his tomb.

He saw the Science Academy being blown to a smoking ruin, his students and friends lying shattered in the rubble as silver wings glinted broken in the dark...

He saw Starscream searching, searching endlessly across a glassy world of heartless ice, fuel and energy fading like his desperate hope until he crashed to the bitter ground at Megatron's feet, and the tyrant laughed as the scientist died under frozen ashes and his fire was blown away as a wail on the wind...

He was frozen under the ice, and he screamed as he was buried alive.

Then, soft and slow in the crushing roar of icy, silent suffocation, Skyfire heard a voice from far away, floating warm on the wind as if it had always been there just on the edge of hearing -

_I will always be there in the dark, loving you..._

Soft and slow, a voice he knew, from a time he remembered...

_"Once and once, dearest girlchile, our people walked the world as we always have done and ever will do..."_

The voice told a story; a story he'd known, it seemed, for all his existence even before he had heard it, that was part of him - the ice melted away, had never been, and out on the rolling plains a campfire burned as an elder told his grandchild a story...

Skyfire awoke slowly; a dim recollection of cold and horror feinting from the shadows filled his short-term memory - demons driven out...by a voice telling a story...

He frowned as his memory sharpened and he came fully online. The story was right, but the voice had been wrong somehow; not the twisted, grotesque mockery of a nightmare spectre, but subtly odd - a familiar song in a different key...

A form shifted at his side and he jumped, twisting his head...to see Starscream lying awkward and huddled up with wings folded back and in danger of falling of the recharge berth completely. At Skyfire's sudden movement the flier shivered and started, Decepticon reflexes propelling him upright and ready for danger - and falling off with a startled yelp before Skyfire threw out his arm and grabbed him. Starscream clung precariously to his hand and grumbled "Well, this is a _fine_ way to say 'Good morning, Starscream.'"

"Starscream, what..._why_ were you _there_...?" Skyfire _was _concerned at his wayward bondmate's behaviour, but Starscream never had been one for convention. And he did look endearing, cranky and cantankerous in the faint light from the corridor.

"You were having a nightmare, weren't you?!... I came in to see if you were all right, calmed you down and stayed with you, and then I get pushed off the berth half in recharge as soon as the next shift starts! Well, you're _very_ welcome love!"

The seeker sniffed and made to stand up, acting hard-done-by for all he was worth, and Skyfire saw through him as easily as Starscream had intended, pulling him down to fall into waiting white arms.

"All right, I'm sorry I made you jump. Happy now?" Skyfire teased, pulling the seeker close and holding him tight. Starscream grumped and wriggled, squirming in an immovable grip until he had made himself comfortable. He leaned his head back against Skyfire's cockpit and shut off his optics with a smirk. "Very."

They sat in silence for a moment or two, until Skyfire rewound the previous 'conversation' and asked, "How did you know I had a nightmare? And what do you mean you 'calmed me down'?"

The seeker snorted. "What a question. You were broadcasting loudly enough to register on the base sensors - I picked you up from the command centre as if you were standing next to me, and Dreadmoon heard you when he was in recharge himself and bumped into me muttering something about the ice burying him alive." Skyfire winced. Starscream felt it and continued a little faster than before. "I came as fast as I could - Dreadmoon covered for me even though he still looked shaky, and I ran in to see you deep in recharge and 'sending like Soundwave on a vendetta. I had to resort to that old tribe's bedtime story to calm you down..."

"You remembered that?" Skyfire was oddly touched that his bondmate still remembered the story at all.

"I know it by heart."

Catching Skyfire's surprised look, he said archly "If you will insist on taking a story to heart, Skyfire, then you shouldn't forget we share a link and I can pick up on it when you repeat it to yourself endlessly." Smiling wryly at Skyfire's slightly embarrassed expression, he added, more gently this time, "Of course I remember. Do you really think I forgot that?"

Skyfire stared at him. "So it was _you_ I heard telling it! I knew I recognised the voice somehow..."

"I'm flattered" Starscream said drily.

Just as Skyfire was about to reply that that wasn't quite what he meant, the door chime sounded and Dreadmoon stalked in to stand by the opening.

"Has the crisis been averted?" he asked curtly, crossing his arms and staring down his nose at the larger jet, the monitor rather more rattled by the shared nightmare than he'd care to admit; at least to Skyfire.

Starscream sighed, somewhere between resigned and annoyed, and was about to say something rather uncomplimentary to his bondmate when an idea struck him and he stopped short. A slow, reflective smile spreading across his face, almost wistful - and making both his companions look at him with a healthy degree of caution - he said thoughtfully, "Dreadmoon... how would you like to hear a story...?"

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Starscream and Skyfire are © Hasbro or whoever, therefore I can only borrow them. Legally. Dreadmoon is © Wayward, but the story is © me, with a little nod to the inimitable Rudyard Kipling, O my best beloved, and his _Just So _stories.


End file.
